Excel® 2013 On Demand

Locating Circular References

A circular reference occurs when a formula directly or indirectly refers to its own cell. This causes the formula to use its result in the calculation, which can create errors. When a workbook contains a circular reference, Excel cannot automatically perform calculations. You can use error checking in Excel to locate circular references in a formula, and then remove them. If you leave them in, Excel calculates each cell involved in the circular reference by using the results of the previous iteration. An iteration is a repeated recalculation until a specific numeric condition is met. By default, Excel stops calculating after 100 iterations or after all values in the circular reference change by less than 0.001 between ...